


Even When the Words Went Wrong

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Right Here, With You [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Under the Red Hood
Genre: AU of Jason's return to Gotham, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hugs, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason's POV, One (1) profanity, Resurrection, everything isn't magically perfect but you can fix a lot without DC being stupid and in the way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 00:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18981277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Bruce Wayne had killed Jason in a thousand different ways. And Jason had killed Bruce in a thousand and one.





	Even When the Words Went Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> In which the writer gets totally Luke 15:20 & 24 up in this hizzouse, because I'm soft for a Gotham return where Bruce and Jason act believably.

Bruce Wayne had killed Jason in a thousand different ways. And Jason had killed Bruce in a thousand and one.

Some nights, it was all Jason could see when he closed his eyes. The glint of a knife. The whistle of a crowbar. The roar of a gun. The flash of a bomb. A fist to the face. A push to the back.

So many deaths, and not all of them physical. Watching Bruce walk away from him was a death. Seeing another blue-eyed boy in his suit was another. Being told they were better off without him, that he should have stayed in the ground, that was the worst death. He dreamed about that one a lot.

But killing would be its own death to Batman. Jason knew that. When Jason died in his dreams, Bruce died, too.

It was what he wanted. It was why he had come back.

Jason had known the climax was coming, the thundering crescendo of his plans and his dreams. He had planned his reentry with a showman’s flair. The duffel bag of heads was about more than quieting the Pit. He wanted to make an entrance. And while he hadn’t _let_ the batarang sweep across his thigh, he hadn’t wholly been displeased when it had. He knew Batman’s next priority would be to test that blood. All Jason had to do was wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. There was no way to tell from Batman’s behavior what he knew—the Bat could be inscrutable when he wished to be—but as they faced each other across an empty rooftop, Jason suspected that the other man wasn’t listening to a word he was saying. That wasn’t in line with the World’s Greatest Detective. The Bat had something else on his mind.

“You don’t have what it takes to give this city what it needs,” Jason spat, fully in the swing of his narrative. The Pit hummed like a swarm of locust in the back of his skull. “You’re weak. You’ve always been weak. You—“

“Take off your mask.”

The order cut through his diatribe like an axe through bone.

Jason’s fingers flexed. It was stupid. He was a different person now. No longer a child, he was a trained hunter, a living weapon. But his first instinct was still to obey that voice.

Instead, he laughed.

“You don’t give orders to me, old man. Not anymore.”

_I’m free. I’m free of you._

He would be freer soon.

Batman’s composure was flaking off him in chunks. It was a sight to see. He was angrier than Jason had ever seen, jaw on the verge of cracking with the strain. Jason felt a sickly sort of pleasure that he was at least able to elicit that after all this time.

“Take off your mask,” the Bat barked again, voice still Dark Knight-deep.

“You first,” Jason taunted. He’d taken some of his helmet’s specs from what he could remember of Batman’s own safety precautions. No one was getting it off him while he was still alive, not without his help.

Batman could give orders, but he wouldn’t take them. Wouldn’t listen to anyone else. Wouldn’t admit that anyone knew better than him.

But the Bat surprised him.

Jason watched, eyes wide beneath his helmet, as Batman bent his head and pulled the cowl free. His breath left him in a rush.

_Bruce_.

Jason had changed in his years away, he knew that. He wasn’t a little kid anymore, no longer desperate for approval. He was taller, broader, faster, stronger, in ways he could have scarcely dreamed of before. It was as if the Jason Todd who had died had stayed dead, and someone else had risen to take his place.

Somehow he had never considered that in the lost years Bruce might have changed, too.

It wasn’t that Bruce was unrecognizable. He wasn’t. The _Bruce_ of him was still there, grim and unyielding. The grey in his hair was new, clustered around the temples, not bright enough to be Alfred’s silver but close. There were lines, too, that had been there before, but only as the finest pencil strokes. Now they were cuts, deep and furrowed. They made Bruce look harder than ever, a man carved from stone, but stone that was beginning to crumble. 

He called Bruce _old man_ , first as a joke and now as a taunt, but this was the first time it almost felt real.

_What happened to you?_ Jason almost asked, but realized that they were beyond those kinds of questions now. He also realized that Bruce was staring at him. Waiting.

_You first_ , he had said. It had been nothing more than a petty schoolyard taunt, but Bruce had called him on it.

“Alright. Alright, fine,” Jason huffed, and undid his helmet. The night air felt good on his skin, for all the exposure made him anxious. He felt unmasked in more ways than one and tried not to let his unease show as he met Bruce’s eye for the first time.

He couldn’t read Bruce’s face. There was no emotion he could pick out, not even anger. Not even disgust. Fear skittered like rat’s claws deep in Jason’s stomach. Fear and something else.

He’d had dreams like this.

“What, no welcome home hug?” Jason threw his arms wide, a perfect mockery of the surly teenager who had secretly treasured every embrace. “Aren’t you happy to see me, old man?”

He wasn’t. Jason knew he wasn’t. It was written all over Bruce’s face. It screamed from every scrap of news Jason had scraped together. A new kid in his suit. A new kid in his bed. A little grave tucked away from the Waynes, stuck beside _Sheila_. Bruce wouldn’t even talk about him in interviews, preferring instead to shut down on the spot and walk away. He looked like he was about to puke just looking at Jason.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Jason jeered. “Gotta say, I figured you’d at least put on a show. Cry in public a little bit, maybe blow a chunk of change on a hospital wing in my name or something. You really couldn’t pull together enough to even do that, though, could you? It wouldn’t have mattered, though. Not with th—“

He forgot how fast Bruce could move. One second, Bruce had been frozen, a basilisk’s prey caught in the glare. The next, he was charging forward.

Even in his surprise, Jason had managed to get the gun around again, mouth spitting out warnings, threats. His finger stuttered against the trigger. He could pull it. Be done right here, right now. This close, there was no way to miss.

It was why he had come to Gotham. It was all Jason could see when he closed his eyes.

He didn’t want this.

But Bruce was on him, his hands reaching for Jason, gripping his arms, and—

Awareness came in waves, like shifting dunes of sand creeping over him.

He wasn’t being attacked.

He wasn’t being restrained.

Bruce had him trapped, but Bruce wasn’t fighting. He was… he… was…

Crying?

Bruce had his face buried in Jason’s hair, and Jason could feel the tears on his scalp and the shuddering breaths rippling through Bruce’s chest.

“B?” he whispered.

He was lost. He was falling. He was thirteen and wide-eyed, awed beneath his wariness. He was fourteen and reckless, eager to please and devoted to the end. He was fifteen and cocky, unsure of his path but sure of who would walk it with him. He was fifteen and dying, alone and crying for his dad.

_What, no welcome home hug?_

It was instinct that braced Jason's legs and shot out his arms, only just fast enough to catch Bruce as his legs buckled. They both still went down.

Jason grunted as his knees hit the roof. The gun hit the ground as well and skittered out of reach. Bruce was still clinging to him, weeping openly now as he moaned something into Jason’s hair.

_My boy. Jason. My boy, my boy._

The part of Jason’s mind that couldn’t deal with this, couldn’t bear to look too closely, noted from afar that it was a good thing the other rooftops were deserted. They made quite a sight, tangled up together on their knees, Batman decowled and crying, the fearsome Red Hood swaddled and on the verge of hyperventilation.

“Bruce,” he managed to breathe, “what the hell?”

Lips pressed to his forehead, and with them, the faintest whiff of kevlar and the soap Jason used to filch because he liked the way it smelled. (Because it smelled like Bruce.) A thumb, huge and still clad in black gloves, rubbed the back of his neck, then tangled deeper into his curls.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to do this again,” Bruce hiccuped. _Hiccuped_. “I know you’re angry. I know we have a lot of ground to cover. But Jason.”

Bruce’s grip loosened just enough that he could pull back, and suddenly Jason was staring him in the eye once more. There was no mistaking the emotion this time.

Bruce ignored his own tear-streaked face to rub a thumb across Jason’s cheekbone, a gesture of habit formed over a fraction of a lifetime, but the only fraction that had really mattered.

“Jason, how could you think I wouldn’t be happy to see you?”

Jason had never dreamed anything like this.

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, the David Cook lyrics are "And even when the world went wrong," but I think mine's more poetic.
> 
> _While the son was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. "Let us celebrate for this child of mine was dead, and he has come back to life. He was lost and now he is found." And they began to celebrate._


End file.
